Etsy open!

For some unknown reason I opened my Etsy shop. I decided to go back to batik painting and I made a couple of cotton pillowcases. I also made some embroidery, a couple of linen bags. If anyone curious about what my other batiks look like, go under the batik label on the right side.

I am into this folk looking style of an embroidery that looks like you cannot actually embroider. I especially like Japanese sashiko, the simply stitch of it.
In the shop, I was thinking of putting up few vintage folk pieces that I can get here easily but the Czech Post charges huge money for shipping packages abroad. They charge incredible twenty dollars for the pacakge up to 1 kg! The textiles are fine though, they can be shipped as a letter and that lowers the cost several times.
Here goes the shop!

Corner view / Cityscape

1. Praha, cathedral at the Prague castle on the very left.
2. Praha, Žižkov, the 19th century part of the city. My recent home. Both pictures taken in the Autumn.
Click on the pictures to see details.

No Fun Coffee and a Pithy Turk (late corner view)

There was this women who lived in South Africa for a while. She had a housemaid, a helper who would come to her house every now and then. Once the housemaid brought someone to help her. Before work they had coffee. The second helper made it. She called it No fun coffee meaning it was going to be a strong one. They drank it and it was time to start work. But the second helper was ready for another cup. This time she made Baby coffee. A weaker one. Then Coffee Americano followed. Which was actually an Italian espresso. And a couple of others that the woman had special names for. She basically finished her coffee venture at the end of the shift but it is not important, the beautiful part is the names she used. This comes from a short article I read in a paper. The lady was Czech and shared her experience on having a household in South Africa. Since then my husband and I have either no fun coffee or baby coffee depending on the part of the day and daily portion of our humor.

As for the Czechs, they drink so called Turkish coffee which one would suppose must be coffee prepared in a džezva like they do in all Balkan countries but it is not. You put a spoonful of ground coffee straight in a cup and pour hot water over it. Done. Buon Apetit. The coffee goes to the bottom and then you drink it. It doesn't sound good but it is OK. But Italian moka press coffee is better.

Travel fever

Tomorow we are leaving for a short trip in Italy, to Lago di Garda. For me and Dominik it is a rehearsal for a BIG trip that comes afterwards, we are all going to Southern Italy in June. Lago di Garda is something that I am to be blamed for if the trip doesn't turn out well. My parents wanted a trip somewhere rare so badly so I am dragging them there. We are taking a train. I am looking forward to that part the most. The blue North changes slowly to the yellow South as the train runs through the Alps. And ... I am not taking the camera. And... I will be also late with the coffee post for the corner view. But check out here the week after next.

Corner view / the great outdoors

Mushroom picking, this is what we do when we hang out outside. Well, with the exception of my own family. We also don't live near the forest but it is just an excuse. But my parents go every now and then and they pick mostly boleti. There are some nice mushroom meals in Czech cuisine, champignons are just not good enough for them. Other than that, mushrooms are my theme and I can talk about cultural aspects of mushrooms for a long time.

Mushroom picking is not such a Czech specialty as Czechs tend to think, as far as I know people pick mushrooms in Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Italy and Russia. But it is true that almost everybody here has been mushroom picking at least once in their lives. Anyway, I have already written about mushrooms on my blog here and also little here.

The first picture of a mushroom-picker we took at the small school do-it-yourself exhibition in the little town in Šumava mountains. Details and other pictures here.


This picture is supposed to add a mystical feeling to this mushroom picking entry. It is in Šumava, the mountains at the bottom of which I grew up. I borrowed the picture, thanks Christina.

Edited: I changed some of the pictures, mushroom disappeared and more pictures of Celtic-Mythic Šumava added. Photo by my husband.

Other corner viewers:
jane, ladybug-zen, ian, bonnie, esti, sophie, cele, modsquad,
caitlin, joyce, ani, couturecoucou, kim, a day that is dessert, natsumi, epe, kaylovesvintage, trinsch, c.t.,jeannette, outi, schanett, ritva, dongdong, francesca, state of bliss, jennifer, dana, denise, cabrizette, bohemian girl, ruth, dianna, isabelle, amber, a girl in the yellow shoes, mister e, janis, kari, jgy, jenna, skymring, elizabeth, audrey, allison, lise, cate, mon, victoria, crescent moon, erin, otli, amy, ida, caroline, lisa, dorte, kimmie, la lune dans le ciel, nicola, malo, vanessa, britta, virgina, april, rebecca, b

Corner shopping

A shopping center in my neighborhood. It stands right next to an old cemetery, so the contrast is spiritual versus... what material?
Other that that, I buy mostly grocers these days. A specific about Prague is that you can go to many small shops run by Vietnamese families. They are on every busy street and on some quieter ones as well. They don't have everything, you can say they don't cook from the same ingredients they offer in their stores. But they are very polite. And their little "minimarkets" are at hand anywhere you go.

As for shopping, I wonder if anyone in the corner view will mention the way women in Naples/Napoli (yes, Italy) buy grocers. I saw it personally. If they live on a street where vendors have their stalls, they drop the basket on a string from the window, with money and list of goodies in it and a vendor fills it in. They pull it up, shopping has been done.

Other participants
jane, ladybug-zen, ian, bonnie,esti, sophie, cele, modsquad,caitlin, joyce, ani, couturecoucou, kim, a day that is dessert, natsumi, epe, kaylovesvintage, trinsch, c.t.,jeannette, outi, schanett, ritva, dongdong, francesca, state of bliss, jennifer, dana, denise, cabrizette, bohemian girl, ruth, dianna, isabelle, amber, a girl in the yellow shoes, mister e, janis, kari, jgy, jenna, skymring, elizabeth, audrey, allison, lise, cate, mon, victoria, crescent moon, erin, otli, amy,ida, caroline, lisa, dorte, kimmie, la lune dans le ciel, nicola, malo, vanessa, britta, virgina, april

Jeans re-cycled and or ideas on recycling before and after 1989

Sewing clothes from old clothes was something we did out of necessity before 1989. Back then, if you wanted something unique, you had to make it yourself and if you desperately needed e. g. a pair of pants you had to whip it up from your aunt's evening dress she used to wear in 1972 or something similar. Fabrics in stores, the ones that you would like to have, just weren't on stock. I know, it sounds like fun today but believe me, it was fun only a little, as for the creativity you had to face up, like it or not, but other than that you just didn't have a choice, you had to recycle.

My family was still lucky in that situation. Our relatives in western Germany would send us so called "winterhilfe" - used clothes, usually completely out of fashion, which for us, young teens meant that we will have lot of fun trying them on on the day they arrived. But then our handy mums were slowly turning them into wearable pieces that even caused some success later at school.
All I want to say is that it would never occurred to me that I would re-sew the old cloths again when I can get it cheaper and nicer in a store. If it wasn't for this creative community on blogs that provoke me to go back to this kind of handy crafts. Strange, how the idea of recycling clothes still means for majority here not being able to afford something better, it means being poor and that feels humiliating here.
So what is going on here? Originally two pants, jeans and something, sewed up together. The front part remained almost unchanged, it is basically the old jeans but smaller, cut on sides and on the inner side of legs. Other parts of the same old jeans were used in this way. Dominik didn't want to take them off after the photo shoot.